The Twelve Kingdoms #1

Twelve Kingdoms Mini-Feature

A grand fantasy adventure in which the heroine, Youko Nakajima, is accosted by a strange man at school
who tells her that she is his master. While she tries to get rid of him a monster bird appears and
part-wrecks the school. Then magical creatures carry her and two other students off to a land that
bears some resemblance to medaeval Japan or China, but permeated with magic.

Two or three things to bear in mind: one, as this was concieved as a 68 episode TV series, (terminated at 45 episodes), it
can take a while for events to play out, two, that the theme of the anime is Youko's development
as a person who can take responsibility for the direction of her life, so if you expect her to
behave as the same annoying helpless female throughout (as anime heroines often do), then
you're barking up the wrong tree altogether.

Without notes or a "dictionary" to hand you may get confused by the minor characters, or the vast array of special
names and titles used in the series. Glossary (external)

Various aspects of the series are quite well covered at other websites, but I hope to cover the
aspects that will be most useful for those coming to the series for the first time. For instance,
if you want to buy some DVDs you'll want to know how they fit with the story arcs, without getting a
"spoiler" of the story. I also wanted to point to the resources available elsewhere
(let's not re-invent the wheel!) www.12kingdoms.us Short synopses of eps 1-39Animetique Long synopses of eps 1-10. Animetique Brief character info & thumbnails.www.12kingdoms.us Brief character info & pictures.